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Published: Friday, Sep. 30, 2011 / Updated: Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 04:55 PM

Soccer pro runs over, around, through competition

LAKE WYLIE -- 

Todd Sykes would be much easier to deal with if he weren’t so darn pleasant. He’s that guy pudgy malcontents like me can’t relate to – fit, tan, calves that could cut cookie dough. A bank job in the city and still time for his lifelong passion, one growing a step at a time all throughout Lake Wylie.

One might say he’s goal-oriented. He’s been a national champion and an international striker. He’s been on professional soccer club lineup cards and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” That’s right ladies – Oprah. Now he oversees 75 youth players as president of Inter Catawba Futbol Club, only months old and already boasting two undefeated teams and another planning for a national championship run in January.

“Todd is a great coach with lots of energy and passion for the sport and the community,” said Lou Pantuosco, executive director of Inter Catawba.

He’s also accommodating. Sykes tells me to name a time and place, and he’ll bring the nets. I spent a lifetime playing American football. He devoted his to the international sort. We’re speaking separate languages here. I could wrap my soccer IQ in bacon and sell it at a vegan retreat. Yet three things I know.

Hope Solo appearing on my television only once every four years, lest I subject myself to “Dancing With The Stars,” is a travesty. Breathe on a forward in the attacking box, and he’ll hit the turf like he’s under sniper fire. And when a midfielder curls a 50-yard, onside, entry pass straight onto your instep at the face of an open goal, and you whiff on the finish like a drunken peg leg pirate, you’re supposed to point your thumb at him as you jog back upfield.

Sykes starts me out with the basics.

“The feet are very difficult to use,” he said.

Sykes isn’t a stranger to bringing soccer to new audiences. Prior to Inter Catawba, he coached eight years in Charlotte. His team moved up two divisions to the highest league play classification in the state, earning state, regional and national rankings. A Matthews, N.C., team including former Liberian orphans found success earning them, among other things, a satellite feed into Oprah’s studio.

His playing career wasn’t bad, either. Sykes earned four state titles – two school and two club – and a national championship by the time he graduated high school. After four years at Fairleigh Dickinson University he played for the University of Essex in England and Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara in Mexico. He also elbowed his way into the starting lineup for pro squad Colchester United.

“As an American going over to Europe, it’s hard to crack the lineup,” Sykes said.

I’m having a hard enough time stateside. Mercifully, Sykes sets up a field just big enough to parallel park a tractor trailer. A few minutes into our scrimmage my lungs will feel like somebody’s 21st birthday down at the propane bar. But I’m not worried. Soccer isn’t exactly a game of prolific scoring. A hamster on a wheel powers most soccer scoreboards.

So naturally it takes about five seconds for Sykes to take the lead. And it wasn’t even Todd. One of his sons – either Landon, 6, or Sam, 4 – breaks away and Todd feeds the ball in stride for a quick strike. I look at teammate Sebastian Mitchell, 6, in wonder of what just happened.

I don’t envy Sebastian. He’s got every move on the joystick, and he’s stuck with me. He’s the same kid who tried to tote my dead weight in a violin and harp competition against his grandparents a few months back. I’m little more help here. Sebastian can’t penetrate team Sykes all by himself, and the boys reel off several more goals before I’ve even sniffed midfield. It’ll be days before I find out these kids are going to Florida next year for a national championship.

“These kids at 4 and 6 are more skilled than I was at 12 and 13,” Sykes later confesses.

Which is the point of Inter Catawba. Organizers set up the nonprofit club team to offer more advanced training than rec leagues without excluding an “entire demographic of the population” by charging thousands of dollars to play. That’s why Sykes doesn’t take a paycheck. It’s also why he switched from established leagues to help create something new.

“What I was seeing was, players weren’t able to play for the love of the game,” Sykes said.

Now some of the best Inter Catawba players, by age, are these lightning streaks bolting by me and filling the old onion bag.

“The quality is very good at the younger ages,” said Pantuosco, himself a two-time national champion in college with a daughter playing on scholarship now. “The older ages are having to play against teams that have been together for many seasons.”

Inter Catawba is chasing established soccer clubs, I’m chasing a 4-year-old who just netted another goal. Sebastian has a couple himself, which ought to warrant some kind of presidential phone call for what little aid I’m offering. But I’m a blocker, not a scorer. So as Sykes barrels toward me on another scoring run, it’s go time.

Turns out he’s a reserve police officer in Clover, so my “bump him and watch him flop” strategy may need rethinking. Every sport I’ve ever played teaches a wide base and hitting position, feet shoulder-width apart. In soccer, I may as well be a wicket. If we had nothing else to do, he’d still be passing the ball to himself between my legs and tickling the training net.

I can’t match his fitness, his skill or pretty much anything else those British announcers romanticize during 90 minutes of general scorelessness. Which by themselves aren’t a problem. It’s just that Sykes is so pleasant about it. He says I’m better than he thought just by looking at me, which certainly doesn’t say much for my looks. And he forgives the American attitude toward soccer, often ignorance at best.

“It’s a culture for every other country in the world,” Sykes said. “Any place you go people sit around and talk soccer, watch soccer, play soccer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 70 years old or 4 years old, they’re doing the same thing.”

I hear how more than half the players Sykes coached in Charlotte moved on to collegiate soccer careers. I see small children already mastering moves I couldn’t mimic in a lifetime. Sykes may never see soccer become the cultural institution here that it is worldwide, but he’ll keep trying. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself without a goal in front of him.

Competition: Former soccer pro and Inter Catawba Futbol Club president Todd Sykes of Lake Wylie

Contest: Sykes, along with sons Landon, 6, and Sam, 4, scrimmage Marks and teammate Sebastian Mitchell, 6.

Score: Not wanting to require a defibrillator, I can’t say that I kept perfect track of the score. I lost count when they got to about 15. And I remember Sebastian scoring a couple. We’ll say that’s about right. Sykes 15, Marks 2.

Overall Record: Lake Wylie Pilot local talent 170.22, Marks 73.9.

On Your Marks is a monthly column where Lake Wylie Pilot reporter John Marks takes on competition from the greater Lake Wylie area, challenging locals in their field of expertise and profiling what makes them special. Check out past On Your Marks columns at lakewyliepilot.com. Look for “On Your Marks” under the “Home” tab. For ideas about who you think Marks should challenge next, e-mail jmarks@lakewyliepilot.com.